"Oh--darling--we mustn't," she protested faintly. "Don't you remember, Philip? Don't you remember, dear, what we are to be to one another?" He stood, face pressed against her burning cheeks; then his arm encircling her waist fell away. "You're right, dear," he said with a sigh so naively robust, so remarkably hearty, that she laughed outright--a very tremulous and uncertain laugh. "What a tragically inclined boy! I never before heard a 'thunderous sigh'; but I had read of them in poetry. Philip, tell me instantly how you came here!" "Ran the guard," he admitted. "No! Oh, dear, oh, dear!--and I told you not to. Philip! _Philip_! Do you want to get shot?" "Now you know very well I don't," he said, laughing. "I spend every minute trying not to. . . . And, Ailsa, what do you think? A little while ago when I was skulking along fences and lurking in ditches--all for your sake, ungrateful fair one!--tramp--tramp--tramp comes a column out of the darkness! 'Lord help us,' said I, 'it's the police guard, or some horrible misfortune, and I'll never see my Ailsa any more!' Then I took a squint at 'em, and I saw officers riding, with about a thousand yards of gold lace on their sleeves, and I saw their music trudging along with that set of silver chimes aloft between two scarlet yaks' tails; and I saw the tasselled fezzes and the white gaiters and--'Aha!' said I--'the Zou-Zous! But _which_?' "And, by golly, I made out the number painted white on their knapsacks; and, Ailsa, it was the 3d Zouaves, Colonel Craig!--just arrived! And there--on that hill--are their fires!" "Oh, Phil!" she exclaimed in rapture, "how heavenly for Celia! I'm perfectly crazy to see Curt and Steve----" "Please transfer a little of that sweet madness to me." "Dear--I can't, can I?" But she let him have her hands; and, resting beside him on the rail fence, bent her fair head as he kissed her joined hands, let it droop lower, lower, till her cheek brushed his. Then, turning very slowly, their lips encountered, rested, till the faint fragrance of hers threatened his self-control. She opened her blue eyes as he raised his head, looking at him vaguely in the dusk, then very gently shook her head and rested one cheek on her open palm. "I don't know," she sighed. "I--don't--know--" and closed her lids once more. "Know what, dearest of women?" "What is going to happen to us, Phil. . . . It seems incredible--after our vows--after the lofty ideals we----" "The ideals are there," he said in a low voice. And, in his tone there was a buoyancy, a hint of something new to her--something almost decisive, something of protection which began vaguely to thrill her, as though that guard which she had so long mounted over herself might be relieved--the strain relaxed---the duty left to him.